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A chance to do television presented itself during summer break from college. My hometown Ohio TV station invited me to host a weekly talk show (“Vantage Point Youth”) featuring conversations with students on a variety of issues. Sometimes I got to go one-on-one with visiting guests: veteran broadcaster David Brinkley, astronaut and future U.S. senator John Glenn, comedian Phyllis Diller. Heady stuff for a college junior. My talk radio break came when a Santa Cruz talk station offered me a Sunday 3-hour talk slot. My subsequent book Leaving the Left led to opportunities to give regular radio political commentary and fill in for vacationing talk radio hosts from California to Florida. What I love about talk radio, both as listener and host, is this: If you don’t like the opinions you hear, you’re always free to express some of your own. Could anything be more dangerously un-American than the growing trend to declare controversial views “hate speech”? The best antidote to bad speech is always more speech. Hopefully better speech, but no guarantees. Anne Rice: From the Gothic to the Gospels
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My first broadcasting gig came when I landed the job of reading morning announcements over my high school loudspeaker. At first I stuck pretty much with the script (“The drama club will meet tonight in room 206 rather than room 313”) but soon I was making ironic asides about school politics and personalities. Like correspondents, fellow students began submitting tidbits. It was a blast.
Anne Rice captured the world's literary imagination with her runaway bestselling series The Vampire Chronicles. Her most recent fictional series based on the Gospels, Christ the Lord, leaves the gothic behind and explores the mysteries beneath the childhood of Jesus. Keith talks with Rice about the personal transformation that gave rise to her literary shift.
One of the founders of the New Left in the 1960s, David Horowitz later renounced his left-wing political radicalism and became a fierce champion of individual liberty, personal responsibility, free enterprise, and a strong national defense. In this free-wheeling conversation with Keith, Horowitz condemns liberal activists for undermining American security and failing to grasp the nature of the Islamofascist threat.
As men enter their 40s and 50s a series of hormonal changes are underway that collectively are referred to as “andropause,” a decline in male hormones known as androgens, especially testosterone. Dr. Justin Mager is a physician who believes the key to healthy aging is to identify and reverse age- and stress-related hormonal imbalances within the endocrine system. He talks with Keith about how men can maintain vibrant personal and sexual health without major pharmaceutical interventions.
Today's Supreme Court guards no doctrine more fiercely than Jefferson's antagonistic wall of separation between church and state. Keith talks with author-lawyer Tara Ross about George Washington's sharply contrasting views, which suggest a more reasonable interpretation of the First Amendment, one that is consistent with religion’s importance to the enterprise of democracy.
Boomer Generation parents: You’ve got a choice to make. You can strive to be popular with your kid, or you can be of real value to them as a parent. Eric Traub insists you can’t do both at the same time. Based on training countless twenty-something young adults and their parents to make skillful life choices, Traub has a tough message for Boomer parents: “Learn to invest yourself in your young adult's future by attending to their self-sufficiency, not how well you are liked by them.”